here with us now, former director of national intelligence, retired admiral dennis blair. elect, non-profit organization that aims to pick a president in the first national online primary. welcome to the show. very good to have you on. >> i want to get to that in a minute. first, let's talk about news that's just coming over the wire about iran. they're cutting exports to france. they cut exports to european countries, including france, spain, italy, greece, portugal, the netherlands, it looks like this crisis is going to continue building over the next several months. what should the u.s. response be? >> i think we need to hold the pretty tough line that we are following. iran externally is always going to react with defiance. but underneath, they're weighing up the landscape, what are the real decisions they have to make. and i think they're going to have to make a hard-edge decision about whether they'd rather be an international praia and have their nuclear weapons or whether they could be a nuclear power state under the nonproliferation treaty and have relations with